You really need to tweak the controls to
your liking, and those who are bred on PC titles will not like being forced to
using just a controller. This game was really meant to go online, but you
can't do that in this version.

Replay Value

7

Not very fun for single players, but
can be a blast when you're playing against others.

Reviewer's Impression

6

Developers of first-person shooters
need to realize that there needs to be a better balance between multiplayer
modes and a single player experience. It's not much fun when you're alone in
a game like this, especially when the single player campaign is pretty weak.

Overall

6.75

Unless you plan on using this
for mostly multiplayer use, I'd skip this game.

The Unreal series has been a long standing mainstay in the PC community as
one of the larger online communities established. In 2000, Unreal Tournament
was ported to the Dreamcast, with the online elements in tact. So why bring a
game that had the online elements intact twice brought to a system that wouldn't
be online for two years? While UT is a fairly good multiplayer game, as a single
player game, it just doesn't fare that well, especially when you ditch the online
elements.

Aside from the online elements, UT isn't that revolutionary of a game. It's
not as complex as Half-Life or Halo, and really it's design is more suited for
deathmatch gameplay rather than goal-oriented stages. Even in the single-player
modes, it seems more like an arena deatmatch with predetermined AI bots. You
can get this kind of thing in many other shooters such as the current 007 games
and TimeSplitters 2, as well as get the mission-oriented stages.

The graphics are adequate. It's not terrible, but it's not revolutionary. If
you have nothing against Dreamcast-like graphics, then you won't be too disappointed here.
The later first-person shooter entries available on all systems look better than
Unreal Torunament. The gore seems a bit standard, much like shooters and action
games that include graphic violence.

The sound is decent, with some fairly good music and sound effects. Not astounding,
but not horrible. The sound just seems to further compliment the underwhelming
package.

The game is only as good as how many people play it. If you intend to play this
game with more than one player most of the time, then I can see this game getting
repeat useage. That's pretty much the only way we played the game in our house.
It was more fun playing against someone else than it was playing alone against the
computer. Without the online mode, the replay value for a single player dwindles
rather quickly. A game with no real solid story and no real goal objectives
just does not leave a whole lot to offer one-player people a worthwhile experience.

If you want a version of Unreal to go online with, turn to your PC, or look
to the X-Box. When a version of Unreal is made for the PS2 with an online element,
get that over this. Hell, get TimeSplitters 2 over this. UT is fairly dated and
is outshined by current offerings.